Embodiments herein generally relate to print queue systems and methods and more particularly to a system and method that highlights print jobs of the active user within the listing of the multiple print jobs.
As described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,978,559 to Quinion (Issued: Nov. 2, 1999 and incorporated herein by reference) a print job is developed at a workstation and delivered to a printer, by way of a server, for the purpose of executing the job. An example of such standard network printing modeling is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,493,634 to Bonk et al. (Issued: Feb. 20, 1996 and incorporated herein by reference). This printing model is appropriate for those situations in which the printer is well suited for printing the job in accordance with certain criteria required by the system user. For example, if the user expects to have a selected number of prints generated within a certain time frame at a selected location, and such criteria is met at the printer, then the user is satisfied. To avoid customer dissatisfaction, a distributed printing model of the type disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,287,194 to Lobiondo (“Lobiondo”) (Issued: Feb. 15, 1994 and incorporated herein by reference) has been proposed. Lobiondo discloses a printshop management scheduling routine and system which provide optimum scheduling of print jobs on a network. The scheduling routine utilizes the total complex of printers available at a local location and/or remote locations to allocate and complete print jobs based on a plurality of criteria, including requested completion time for the project. If requested completion time does not allow printing of the print job by a sole printer, the print job is allocated to a plurality of available printers, each printing a portion of the complete print job.
Other distributed printing models are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,574,831 to Grenda (Issued: Nov. 12, 1996 and incorporated herein by reference) and U.S. Pat. No. 5,596,416 to Barry et al. (Issued: Jan. 21, 1997 and incorporated herein by reference). In particular, the '831 patent discloses a print array having an electronic image control device communicating with both first and second printer engines. Image data is routed from the second printer engine to the first printer engine when a failed status signal is provided by the second printer engine to the electronic image control device.
The above-mentioned patents directly or indirectly address the concept of classifying a job in accordance with one or more attributes of the job. Describing a job in terms of job level and/or page level attributes is considered, in some detail, by the disclosure of U.S. Pat. No. 5,181,162 to Smith et al. (Issued: Jan. 19, 1993 and incorporated herein by reference). The Smith patent discloses an object oriented document management and production system in which documents are represented as collections of logical components or “objects” that may be combined and physically mapped into a page-by-page layout. Stored objects are organized, accessed and manipulated through a database management system.
The concept of managing a job on the basis of its attributes is further disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,467,434 to Hower Jr. et al. (Issued: Nov. 14, 1995 and incorporated herein by reference) and U.S. Pat. No. 5,450,571 to Rosekrans et al. (Issued: Sep. 12, 1995 and incorporated herein by reference). Each of the Hower and Rosekrans patents illustrate systems which use servers having multiple queue capability. Moreover, U.S. Pat. No. 5,129,639 to DeHority (Issued Jun. 14, 1992 and incorporated herein by reference) discloses a system which permits interactive communication between a client and a server when the server is unable, because of an attribute mismatch, to fulfill the requirements of the client's job.
The advantage of using one or more queues in a printing process has been demonstrated by U.S. Pat. No. 4,947,345 to Paradise et al. (Issued Aug. 7, 1990 and incorporated herein by reference). Paradise discloses a system in which copy/print jobs are delivered to an output queue which communicates with a printer while Fax jobs are delivered to a hold queue which communicates with the output queue. In practice, after a certain number of Fax jobs have accumulated in the hold queue, they are delivered to the output queue in such a manner that the Fax jobs are printed ahead of all jobs currently residing in the output queue. Another queue arrangement for a printing system is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,206,735 to Gauronski et al. (incorporated herein by reference). As illustrated by U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,450,571 and 5,467,434, (incorporated herein by reference) multiple queues can be advantageously to distribute jobs across a network printing system.